Thunder, lightning, rain smashing down. A crowd of eyes behind her, looking past her, widened, the thrill of the storm. Then she hears Jo Harper’s voice, and sees a scream of lime-green, fluorescent under the trees. The stroller. Harper has the stroller, she’s running towards her with it and Lauren sets off sprinting. Jo is shouting, but the storm is louder, and Lauren’s steel-toed walking boots on the path crack out an urgent staccato that drowns out her own words, “Are they there? Do you have them?” until they meet on the bridge, Patrick too, and they are there, her babies, they’re alive and she reaches inside the top car seat and unclips one baby and Patrick unclips the other and holds him but she wants them both so she pulls Patrick close with the two babies between them and the rain is pounding down upon them and they’re all drenched but the babies, the babies are alive and they’re here in her arms, her precious boys. Lauren is saying their names, over and over, “Riley, Morgan, are you OK? Did she hurt you?”

Then Lauren straightens up and looks at Harper, who is watching her in a strange way, and she looks at Patrick, who is crying and shaking, then turning his face up to the sky in anger as if someone up there were responsible, his white shirt translucent on his skin, tie hanging wet and limp so that suddenly he is vulnerable, pitiable, the sight of him tearing at her. She kisses him then, the smell and the taste of him tugging at something low in her belly, a memory of a time, the base chemistry that all this came out of.

“Thank God,” Patrick said, and though he kept glowering at the sky as if he really meant, fuck you God, when he spoke to the babies his voice was tender. “We thought we’d lost you, little buddies. Where did you get to?”

Lauren and Patrick turned towards Harper, the question in the air and in their faces.

“They were with a woman,” said Harper, “in the river. Don’t worry, we got her, she’s in custody.”

“Who was it?” The question roared out of him, and he stepped towards the police officer, the baby in his arms protected, but his hands curled into fists. Lauren shifted the baby she held so she could put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, feeling the taut sinew and coiled muscle beneath the thin cotton. It’s not Harper you want, Patrick. Save it for the woman, the child thief, the witch.

“I don’t have that information yet. She didn’t identify herself. She’s being taken to the station as we speak; we’ll know very soon.”